My article on the Irish sf writer James White should be online at the Honest Ulsterman in the next few days.

White was best known for his medical-sf novels and stories set around the enormous space hospital Sector General, but also wrote a wide variety of other sf novels including Open Prison (vt The Escape Orbit), All Judgement Fled and Underkill.

As I’ve mentioned before, it’s part of a series of articles on Irish speculative authors I’ve been writing for the HU over the last year or so which has so far included Bob Shaw, Fitz-James O’Brien and Sheridan Le Fanu.

It was a good excuse, too, to revisit a certain age of English language sf (White was very much in the Anglo-American tradition), when mid-list writers like White were producing a steady stream of good, solid and entertaining science fiction. Part of me misses those kind of books and those kind of authors who remained steadfast and true to that core ‘sense of wonder’ that science fiction does so well.